


carving out a niche for ourselves (in this forsaken world)

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: Fic Exchanges [Starrie Wolf] [12]
Category: Gangsta. (Manga)
Genre: BAMF Nicolas, BAMF Worick, Choices, Families of Choice, Growing Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 01:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5072713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They hadn't always been Benriya. In the beginning, they were just Wallace and Nicolas, two of the many souls adrift in the cesspool that was Ergastulum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	carving out a niche for ourselves (in this forsaken world)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverminetohold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverminetohold/gifts).



One moment he was asleep; the next he was weightless, flying through the air, his head slamming into the wall so hard he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were actually open, a dizzying kaleidoscope of stars flooding his vision.

It took embarrassingly long for Wallace to realise that it wasn’t just his ears that were ringing.

He sat up far too fast, biting back a choked groan as his vision swerved precariously like a staggering drunkard, pressing a hand against the wall to brace himself. The shock of the cool stone was a jolt to his senses, and Wallace forced his eye to stay open, wanting to, _needing_ to find Nicolas, the cacophony of ringing steel and shredding plaster the backdrop to his increasing panic.

Even on a good day, he would have had trouble tracking the individual blurs flitting around the room, springing off walls as though the concept of gravity was a mere suggestion. But now – sleep-drunk, half-blinded in the dark, and a sizeable goose egg just beginning to swell on his skull? Wallace didn’t stand a single chance.

One of the dark blurs resolved into Nic’s silhouette for the briefest moment, there and gone again in a flurry of clanging weapons.

Gun. Where was his gun?

Questing fingers nudged into something cool and cylindrical, and Wallace’s gasp of relief was swallowed by the deafening thudding of his heart. He brought his firearm up automatically, only for his aim to stutter when he realised that he _still_ couldn’t make out more than vague shadows, that he was equally likely to hit Nic by accident.

Wallace lowered his gun into his lap, and only then did he realise that he was trembling – in fear or rage or sheer desperation he couldn’t tell. The knowledge that the two enemy Twilights didn’t even _bother_ to disarm him was a bitter pill to swallow. Even harder was the knowledge that they were _right_. What could a Normal do against two enhanced superhumans, anyway?

He jerked back on reflex when a body went flying, crashing into the wall nearby, and his blood ran cold when he recognised Nic’s prone form, one of the Twilights standing over him.

His gun was up before Wallace had conscious thought to aim, his shot catching the Twilight in the shoulder – _useless, pointless, a flesh wound even twelve-year-old Nic could have shrugged off_ – before the other Twilight loomed out of the shadows. The second man grinned toothily, strolling towards him with the unhurried steps of a predator who knew his prey was well and truly cornered. Moonlight filtering through the jagged glass in the broken window glinted off the tags proudly jangling against his chest with each step.

A/1.

His gasp came in a short, sharp exhale this time. Ten ranks above Nic, just two ranks shy of the legendary Paulkee Guild masters…

The Twilight stalked forwards a step, and without thinking Wallace pressed the trigger, a startle reflex his years on the streets of Ergastulum had burned into his bones. But the grin on the A/1’s face only widened, if that was even possible, showing off a mouth full of teeth pointed like a tiger’s even as he swayed out of each and every one of Wallace’s shots, as though the gun wasn’t aimed point-blank at centre mass, until the trigger goes click-click-click on an empty barrel and his mind was terrifyingly empty save for the phrase, _so this is how I die_ –

He kept his eyes open by sheer force of will, refusing to close them, refusing to even blink – which was the only reason why he spotted the slightest flicker of movement in his peripheral vision – but he was still caught off-guard when the A/1 stumbled, throat gurgling, the tip of Nic’s katana protruding from his chest.

Between the span of one blink and the next the enemy Twilight was on the ground and Nic had taken his place. Bare-chested and his sleep pants riding low on his hips, it could have been any regular night if it wasn’t for the blood-encrusted katana in Nic’s hand or the bloodthirsty grin stretched across his face.

“ **dOn’T tOUch hIm.** ”

Wallace opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the scene was so agonisingly familiar to That Event they didn’t talk about, ever, that his voice froze solid in his throat.

Nic wavered on his feet, the katana in his hand drooping a quarter-inch, blinking in what Wallace might have once thought was confusion but now knew was a sign of the Celebrer uppers beginning to wear off.

Movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention, then, and _how could he have forgotten the enemy Twilights_ – of course a simple sword through the chest wouldn’t keep an A-rank down for long. Wallace lunged for the little case of Celebrer downers hidden under the bed, the highly potent (and highly illegal) injectable syringes he’d lifted off Theo in a fit of pique –

– Nic was already turning around, his katana coming back up even though his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, the expression on his face warring fiercely between murderous protectiveness and a stark sense of resignation –

No. _No._

The next few moments happened far too fast for Wallace to really register anything, shadows crashing through the remnants of the broken window in a blur of high speed movement he’d _never_ witnessed before in his life, not even that time when Nic swallowed an entire bottle of Celebrer uppers in one go, right before he went after Daniel Monroe.

“P-please s-stop fighting immediately.”

Wallace squinted in the semi-darkness, trying to get a good look at the woman, if only so he could decisively file her under the _Extremely Dangerous_ column. She might be stuttering, but Wallace had long learnt the hard way that physical compensation had no bearing on actual combat ability, not when she’d just somehow waded into a fight between three Twilights like they were no more than a pile of overgrown puppies.

Nic growled out something guttural, something Wallace didn’t immediately parse, too busy shifting position until he could take in the whole situation. The woman had long dark red hair visible even in the dim light, and the A/1 was dangling from her grasp like a naughty dog, the other Twilight laying very still – a wise choice, given that the heel of a stiletto was pressed warningly into his jugular.

Making an executive decision – he had absolutely no doubt she could take Nic if she needed to, but it would probably reflect better on them if she didn’t _have_ to – Wallace grabbed Nic’s arm before he could raise the katana again, forcing it down even as he slipped boldly past Nic to face her.

“Who are you?” Wallace asked, and was proud of the way his voice didn’t hold a single quaver, his hand clenching tighter on Nic’s arm in warning after another attempt to shove him behind Nic.

He’d never admit to being just a little surprised when the woman answered readily, “G-ginger, from the G-guild.”

Ginger. An image of a redhead in thick glasses flashed into his mind’s eye, as clear as though he’d snapped a photo of her the day he’d gone with Nic to get registered at the Paulkee Guild. Rank S/5, the tags jangling in front of her woollen shirt had proclaimed, and Nic’s eyes had lit up in excitement before Wallace dragged him away with quips to not stare at a woman’s chest lest she beat him up.

Well, at least someone from the Guild probably wasn’t there to kill them.

“Good to see you, Ginger,” he said cautiously. “Do you know who these other two are?”

Ginger hesitated, as though trying to figure out if he’d meant the greeting. “G-good to s-see you, Wallace-s-san. T-they’re p-p-probably rogues, hired to k-kill you. S-sir will know more.”

Sir. Probably Paulkee herself, then. Wallace nodded his thanks, mulling over the new information. He wasn’t surprised to hear about someone sending assassins after him, nor that they’d know about Nic, but what did surprise him a little was how they hired an A/1 and an – he squinted at the tags – A/3 just to deal with a lowly B/5.

Nic would probably appreciate the compliment, once he came down from the Celebrer high.

Wallace sighed and resigned himself to knocking on Theo’s door in the middle of the night again.

* * *

The measured strike of heeled combat boots against the floor woke him from his reverie.

Sitting beside an unconscious Nic – now stretched over one of the beds in Theo’s clinic – Wallace looked up when the Guild Master herself came into view.

Neither of them spoke for a long while, Paulkee content to blow smoke rings into the air while Nic’s fingers itched for a cigarette, never mind that Theo had banned smoking in his clinic. He had the feeling that Paulkee rarely cared about trivial things like other people’s opinions.

“There are only three registered Twilights in Ergastulum contracted to a single person.”

Wallace blinked. “What?”

The word slipped out of his mouth without meaning to, and Paulkee continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “A single contract holder, even with a Twilight guard, is much easier to kill than a group.”

Something icy and cold slipped into the bottom of his stomach, and lodged itself there.

Paulkee blew one last smoke ring into the air, turning to walk out of the room.

“Don’t let him overdose again. I won’t be so merciful next time.”

* * *

Wallace sat in silence long after Paulkee had departed, his eyes tracing the bloodied bandages on Nic’s body as though he didn’t already have each and every one of them burned into his retinas.

There would always be people after the Arcangelo fortune – of which Wallace was the sole inheritor, even if the majority was locked in deeds and accounts he couldn’t access unless he personally turned up to collect it, which was like sending an open invitation to assassins – but usually, they either severely underestimated Nic or forgot all about Wallace’s silent shadow.

Whoever who decided to hire a pair of A-ranks to do the deed was either extremely rich or extremely cautious; probably both.

Wallace’s hands clenched into fists in his lap.

He couldn’t get the memory of Nic crashing into the wall out of his head, the visceral terror of seeing Nic fall, of not being able to do _anything_ while Nic was fighting for both of their lives.

But what could he have done, a Normal against two Twilights, never mind two A-ranked Twilights? Twilights were called Twilights because they were stronger than Normals, faster than Normals; how could a weak puny Normal ever defeat one of these supersoldiers?

 _So what_ , shot back the defiant little boy who’d stared his father down, who’d watched his entire family die in front of him. Nic was a mere B/5 and _deaf_ on top of that, and he’d held his own against both A-ranks. _Rank’s just an arbitrary number._

They weren’t affiliated with the Guild. They weren’t affiliated with anyone. And he wasn’t about to let Nic die, not after all the trouble he’d gone to, to keep the pair of them alive for so long.

Wallace picked up the phone.

“Inspector Chad? I need a favour.”

* * *

Nic was sitting up in bed when Wallace returned, gingerly sipping at water from a cup. He glanced up when Wallace dropped into the chair next to his bed, his fingers twitching in silent question.

“Had to take care of some matters.” Wallace’s fingers tapped out a quick nervous rhythm on his thigh, and Nic shot him a completely nonplussed, _well just spit it out_ look. “I don’t want to be Wallace Arcangelo anymore.”

Slowly, very slowly, Nic raised an eyebrow, lowering his cup of water.

“Wait,” Wallace said hastily, raising his hands just in case Nic decided to beat his head in for that odd non-sequitur. “I mean, we’ve been in Ergastulum for, what, seven years?” He didn’t wait for Nic’s nod, continuing, “but in all that time, we’ve barely managed to scrape a living for ourselves as Nicolas and Wallace. And maybe that’s because we were just stupid kids back then, but we don’t need to be two stupid kids for the rest of our lives.”

He tossed a pair of shiny new tags – compliments of the Paulkee Guild – onto Nic’s lap, and watched Nic’s eyes widen in stunned silence, his fingers brushing over the smooth metal polish.

A/0, they proclaimed.

“We can be Nic and Worick, and this cesspool of a town won’t know what hit them.”

After a moment, Nic met Worick’s bloodthirsty grin with one of his own.

“I think _Handyman_ has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree?”

**Author's Note:**

> While looking through Worick's _Gangsta._ wiki page I came across the line "Worick has a very conflicted opinion of Nicolas Brown, his lifelong partner" and mis-read it as "life partner" the first time around :D
> 
> [I have a Tumblr if you're interested!](starriewolf.tumblr.com)


End file.
